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Vance seems to be confusing the right to privacy with the ability to actually enforce it. Apparently, a "right" to privacy is all well and good, as long it can be casually violated and a warrant served later. As soon as the mechanism protecting your privacy has real teeth, then it's a problem.

Many processors in a modern car have no floating point capability whatsoever. Fractional numbers are represented using integers - "fixed point" representation. While it's almost certainly true that vehicle speed is calculated as a fractional value, the cruise control set speed may be an integer, as it's set in increments of 1kph (or mph, depending). There's no need to keep smaller increments.

It all depends on which processor is handling the cruise control interface, and how they wrote the software. There's no way to know without more information.

Heat. If there's no airflow around the blower (and therefore the blower motor which is usually integrated, then the motor will run hotter. Temperature has an inverse relationship with motor lifetime. The hotter it runs, the sooner it will fail. Even if it never exceeds its maximum rated temperature.

If he wanted to be shut down over guilty feelings, he could, you know, just stop. So that's probably not it.

You push a button and the blade snaps out in both cases. What's the real difference? The internal mechanisms differ, but the end result is the same.

It's also interesting that there is no effective difference between a switchblade and these "spring assisted" knives. Yes, the mechanism is different. But in both cases, you push a button, and the blade pops out rapidly.

The very existence of these knives is clearly to circumvent existing laws regarding switchblades.

This is entirely separate from the big-guys vs little-guys argument being made against Google.

No, but that's just the point. It's smart enough to know that at key-on, it has very little information about the actual fuel level, so it allows the needle to move rapidly. As it continues to operate, it gradually (probably over a few seconds) filters the fuel level measurement more, so you don't get rapid fluctuations while driving.

Edit: grammar

Some cars are really good at this. Some are not. It depends on so many factors, including the egghead quality.

I'm one of those firmware eggheads, btw.

As another example, when I fuel my car from emtpy to full, as soon as I turn the key, the fuel gauge ramps rapidly up to Full. In my wife's car, it finds its way to Full after a minute or so. I don't know, but I'm pretty sure the difference is the filtering algorithm employed. One egghead knew about Kalman filters or similar, and the other didn't.

It's the same with all the other software features in the car. Some had good eggheads on the time, and some didn't. I think it's impossible to buy a car that does every single thing "right", by any single person's definition.

Being a controls engineer, this behavior always drives me crazy. I love to observe the temperature controller do its job. But it does depend on the car.

A good controller will blast the heat at max until the temperature gets close to the setpoint, then back it down. Turning it up to 90 does exactly nothing extra for you, but does end up overheating you.

However, not all cars have good temperature controllers. My wife owned a Honda Accord a while back, that was simply awesome at this job. We never, ever changed the setpoint in that car because it just worked great.

The Subaru Forester we have now is much, much worse, and we do end up fiddling with the setpoint because the controller's not doing its job well.

My carrier didn't subsidize my phone. I bought it from Google, and put my old SIM card in it.

There's a book called Buddha's Brain that documents several studies of people meditating while being scanned by an fMRI machine. It's quite fascinating. Regular meditation alters connections in the brain, similar to how working out a muscle changes the muscle.

I was on the fence on whether claimed effects of meditation were real, and reading this book clinched it for me. It anchored the claims I'd read elsewhere in something I actually believe - fMRI scans of brain activity.

Thank you both _delirium and bermanoid. You have managed to express my sentiments exactly, but much more eloquently than I could have.

I am always so frustrated by the notion of "the market is always right". As if a system with billions of complex actors could somehow be described like a first order linear system, that will always find a stable equilibrium.

Scheme works great in SICP because it doesn't get in the way. After the first few pages, it doesn't feel like you're reading a programming language so much as reading the direct expression of concepts discussed in the text. The programming language learning hurdle is almost nonexistent.

That fact reduces cognitive load on the reader, freeing up mental resources that can be applied to the concepts presented.

In that sentence, "one" is the subject and "in four teens" is a prepositional phrase. When choosing the verb form, we look at the subject, which is this case is singular. So, "is" is in fact the correct form to use.

A more detailed explanation can be found here: http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/prepositionalphrase.htm

That sort of reasoning works fine right up until there are only ebooks. Then there's no alternative, and the terms of service are effectively no longer voluntary.

If voting was meant to indicate agreement or disagreement, then EVERYBODY would be able to downvote.

I believe the article states they notified the banks before publishing the original work.

On capitalization:

You're not E.E. Cummings. He deliberately eschewed punctuation as part of his poetry, exploring possibilities. HN comments are not usually poetry in that sense. The point is to communicate ideas efficiently to others.

We capitalize the first letters of sentences because it makes it easier to see where one sentence ends and another begins. The period at the end of the previous sentence contributes to the same purpose. A period is pretty small, though, so a capitalized letter helps it out a lot.

Breaking this rule "just because" is lazy and requires more effort by the reader to read your text. Similar to using "u" and "ur" (on a non-phone device), it says "I can't be bothered to pay attention to detail."

When it comes to writing, I absolutely judge based on appearance. If you can't bother to write correct sentences, how can I know you'll bother to account for spending in detail? Or cover all the cases in error checking code? Of course, the way one writes is just one facet of many, but it contributes to the overall impression.

I think you're right. They want to close the deal because they may have been searching for a new hire for a while, and they can only field ONE offer at a time. If you decline, they want to know as soon as possible so they can offer to the next choice. If every offer takes two weeks to resolve, it could take a month or two to make a hire AFTER a number of good candidates have come through.

With all due respect, if you want the airlines to listen to you, you should say it to them, not HN.

Good point. Maybe we should stop thinking of Lexus and Acura as luxury brands.

Real luxury brands are the ones those of us in the middle class can't even consider buying. Maybach. Bentley. Rolls Royce. Bugatti. I could drive a Lexus today if I wanted. Even a BMW. I don't think I'll ever have enough money to blow on a Rolls.

Testifying is providing information to the court. Decrypting your hard drive is providing information to the court. What's the difference?

I would argue that all evidence is really just information. Once again, the old lines dividing one category from another become blurred.

You're exactly right. As a sole proprietor, I can save WAY more in my own 401k than I could at any previous employer. I think about 3x more. It's known as a "Solo 401k", adapted to suit the needs of one person's (or a married couple's) needs. It mostly means less administrative hassle. But the contribution limits are much higher.

That's really funny. It reminds me of my old Quiz Bowl days, where I would raise my hand while still working out the answer. I trusted my brain would finish the problem before the "well, what's your answer?" pause ran out.

I suspect this individual was extremely bright, and would have succeeded regardless of job specifics.

All good questions, I think, except the last one. It doesn't matter if you volunteer to sip your explosive liquids because your intent is to die in the upcoming explosion anyway. Sipping them doesn't prove anything.

I think the point of saying nothing is that once you open your mouth, you can say something inadvertently that could be used against you (rightly or wrongly). Once the words start coming out, one follows the other, and you'll likely end up saying something you didn't want or need to. If your policy is to maintain silence except for the most basic interactions, then accidental self-incrimination is much less likely.

Perhaps they're just independent observations of real phenomena?

Agree. My wife and I have a protocol worked out. I can ignore any call if I need to. If it's an emergency, she will call again immediately, and that means I'd better answer it.

One possible justification would be it distorts the reality of what actually happened in the past. It alters conversations by removing a speaker, creating a hole.

I'm not judging you one bit. I don't know which sites you were referring to, and you're clearly taking the nice-guy approach. But there are arguable reasons to not remove content just because someone is embarrassed of their past self.

This exact same argument could be used on the theoretical pacemaker in another question. But he believes the pacemaker should free software. His response there could have been tongue-in-cheek, but I can't quite tell.